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Ship models have been made for centuries, representing changes in style and function of ships and boats, all around the world, making them such interesting objects! My current project in ship and historic model conservation illustrates this point well, as it is a model of a Chinese junk. A “junk” is a ship from China, and as you can see they are most unlike the European ships we are used to seeing. This project represents a challenge as the historical context of objects is an important consideration when conserving objects, and I had no knowledge about junks prior to starting the project. Read more…

National Museums Liverpool’s conservation studios have been a hive of activity over the past few months, as conservators have been busy preparing objects for the new Museum of Liverpool, which opens in just 12 days’ time.

Recently I have been lucky enough to conserve a number of handheld fans which will be exhibited in the new museum’s Global City gallery. When I found out that I would be conserving fans, I expected to encounter paper and perhaps some plastic or wooden sticks, but I was in for a much bigger treat! Lacquer, ivory, tortoiseshell, silk, feathers, gold pigment and mother of pearl were just some of the materials that I came across. Read more…

Bernie, Denise and Sun Yui worked with us to find out more about their families who feature in a new interactive Family Tree displayed in East meets west – The Story of Shanghai and Liverpool, part of the new Museum of Liverpool opening on July 19th.

Copies of marriage certificates, passenger lists and trade directories have been put together in a visual log that will provide visitors with plenty of ideas on how to track down family members past and present. These personal stories took us to archives in Shanghai where researchers tried to trace the participants’ Grandfathers – Sow Loo, Ching Ming and Leung Ngau. Read more…

Seventy years since the May Blitz, the spirit of Pitt Street lives on.

Seventy years ago this month, a devastating aerial bombardment struck Liverpool, ending lives, demolishing homes and displacing whole communities. It is in tribute to “the spirit of an unconquered people” that Liverpool’s Anglo-Chinese community were part of the effort to keep calm and carry on, piecing back together not just buildings but homes and livelihoods.

Pitt Street, 1915, shaped by tall converted warehouse buildings and cobbled streets, stretches out under the constant watch of St Michaels Church spire, busy with dozens of Chinese businesses, from boarding houses to grocers and tobacconists. This was the birthplace of Liverpool’s Chinese community, the destination for seamen from all over the world including Spain, the Philippines, Italy, the West Indies and Scandinavia – to name just a few. To the people who lived and grew up there, this was ‘world’s end.’ Pitt Street was the place to go, bustling with shops and cafes all within easy reach of the docks. Kwong Shang Lung was one of the city’s earliest grocers to specialise in Chinese food, trading from 1915 until the bombs fell in 1941. Read more…

David Yip narrated ‘Where has my father gone?’ for East meets West – The Story of Shanghai and Liverpool. With special thanks to David Yip and Lisa O’Neil for providing these images.

“How could it happen? How could I not know about this?” was David Yip’s response when he heard for the first time about the enforced repatriation of hundreds of seamen from Liverpool’s Chinese community that took place in 1946.

For many of those directly affected, the wives and children of Chinese seamen who worked for the Merchant Navy during the Second World War, the truth about their sudden disappearance wasn’t known until decades later – many thought they had been abandoned. Now, 65 years later, more and more are discovering the truth. Read more…

I like the way Chinese artists have depicted the West over the centuries, particularly on ceramics and canvas.

Their work shows a fine delicacy which is charming as well as inspirational. Chinese marine art perhaps lacks the sense of movement captured by European artists but I am drawn in by the incredible technical detail.

A number of Chinese artists worked in Far East ports specialising in ship portraits for Western captains.

Several fine examples from the period 1850 to 1910 are on display in Merseyside Maritime Museum’s Art & the Sea gallery. Read more…

Francesca Aiken, assistant exhibition curator for the Global City gallery in the new Museum of Liverpool says:

‘The Sailors Farewell’ cup and saucer, on display in the Global City gallery from July in the new Museum of Liverpool

Working late, forgot the flowers, no card this year? Spare a thought for the wife of this sailor, whose husband must soon depart for many weeks or months on board ship without contact from home.

A sailor’s life was a dangerous one, where being swept overboard or wrecked without hope of rescue were a constant risk. Forget texts or Facebook, this young woman would have to wait until he returned home to know if he was safe or not.

Known as ‘The Sailors Farewell’ this porcelain teacup and saucer was made in China in the early 1800s for sale to European socialites who enjoyed the delicate art of tea drinking.

Due to be displayed in the new Museum of Liverpool opening this July, this rare example of a European couple painted by Chinese artists will feature in the Global City gallery alongside some of the best examples of Liverpool and Chinese pottery from the 18th and 19th centuries.

East meets West the story of Shanghai and Liverpool illustrates how potters in Liverpool upped their game by imitating Chinese porcelain (even going so far as to add fake Chinese marks to the base) to meet the insatiable demand of consumers.

We had a really interesting range of entries and exhibition curator and competition judge Betty Yao found it difficult to choose the winner from nearly 200 photos. However after much deliberation Betty chose three images, which have all also been blogged about over the course of the competition, with the overall winner being ‘Chinese New Year – People’ by Lee Carus, an image she says she ‘returned again and again to’ because ‘…there is so much there – capturing the people, the colours’. Congratulations to Lee, who wins a banquet meal for two at Yuet Ben.

The two lucky runners-up are Graham Morgan, whose enigmatic shot Betty praised ‘for capturing the moment’, and Mark McGowan, whose Chinese arch photo reminded her of two atmospheric images from the exhibition; of the pagoda reflected on the lake, and the hazy shot of a man standing by the River Min.

Congratulations to all our entrants, and one final reminder to visit the Maritime Museum this weekend for your last chance to see John Thomson’s fascinating images.

The Liverpool’s Chinatown through the lens photo competition has ended today, and there is a fantastic range of interesting photos in the competition pool on Flickr. Thanks to all those people who submitted photographs – the images make for fascinating browsing! The winner will receive a banquet for two at Yuet Ben, with two runners-up winning exhibition catalogues.

Quite a few different subjects that I have blogged about over the past few weeks appear here – the buildings in Chinatown, the crowds, the flags – but most prominent is the saturation in vivid colour. Practically no two areas use quite the same colour or hue, and the jostling of a brilliant orange jacket to a pearlescent green flag, shimmering gold surrounded by whites, pinks and blues, mirrors the heaving crowds.

Despite the level of detail, the composition is spacious: the cream buildings in the background and the smoke whiting-out the centre is effective in both throwing the more sharply defined foreground figures into relief and receding the background crowds and buildings, a depth enhanced by the stolid black railings to the right leading into the image. Also interesting is the fact that although the crowds are the ostensible subject, those figures in the background left comprise a fairly abstract mass of curves and shapes, the effect being like a painter suggesting a figure or object with a few simple flicks of a paintbrush – they become real as the viewer steps away. See the photo in a large size. Read more…

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